the chip maker's digital home group is architecting new hardware platforms and contributing to networking and device interoperability standards in an effort to simplify product design and help remove the barriersboth physical and related to software and networking incompatibilitieswhich largely prevent home electronics from sharing music, video and other multimedia content, said don macdonald, general manager of intel's digital home group.

macdonald gave the opening keynote here at digital life, a three-day consumer technology and entertainment trade show produced by ziff davis media, the parent company of ziff davis internet.

macdonald argued that the convergence of computers and consumer devices for music, television and movies has already occurred.

pcs can play music, television, movies and other multimedia and, soon, televisions will be capable of acting like pcs. but despite the capabilities of their hardware, computer and consumer electronics industries have yet to sort out how to distribute and display all of the content that is available to consumers in one form or another.

however, intel has a plan to make more content available, macdonald said. the company will pitch viiv, a forthcoming pc hardware platform, as a sort of united nations of digital content for home pcs. viiv pcs will include familiar elements such as intel's dual-core pentium chips.

however, they will also include a media server that can translate file formats, such as video, on the fly. the media server can thus link stand-alone home media devices and remove the road blocks that have prevented them from working together thus far.

"we know that the world basically has been transformed" by hardware convergence, macdonald said. so, now, "the question is no longer, 'what do we make?' we must ask, 'what do we make possible?'"

thus far, intel has been working with media companies, hollywood studios and other content companies to gain access to their wares. however, the chip maker will leave the decisions on what to provide to pc makers, consumer electronics companies and others who will build products on top of its silicon.

"we're trying to provide a platform that people can drive content on top of," macdonald said in an interview following his keynote. "there's an awful lot of content out there that's not accessible" to consumers at the moment, he said, including television content, interactive content and personalized content.

thus, by using viiv, pc makers could offer a wide range of content, in addition to ensuring that their machines are compatible with a bevy of home media devices, as intel has been conducting interoperability testing for numerous devices and its viiv pcs, macdonald said.

during his keynote, the intel executive demonstrated a pc running the media server translating an avi format movie, recorded on a handheld video camera, to show on a television designed for mpeg2 files.

macdonald admitted that intel's current strategy largely relies on viiv pcs as the conduit for much of the content viewed in the home.

however, the chip maker is working to expand its suite of hardware and software capable of serving up movies, music and other files, by adding chips and software for a range of other devices, including set-top boxes, televisions and video recorders that will be able to communicate directly with each other.

some media players based on intel processors, including a new model from lg electronics, will hit the market soon. however, many of the more advanced devices will hit the market in the three- to five-year time frame, macdonald said.

macdonald showed off "olo river," a new all-in-one processor that will grant tv sets, video recorders and set-top boxes pc-like capabilities for communications and showing data.

given the work intel is doing on hardware, macdonald argued that, in the future, the most difficult aspect of creating digital home products based on its platforms will be arriving at agreements over accessing digital content and then creating the devicesand the possibly custom user interfacesto display them, macdonald said.

hitachi corp., for one, showed off during the keynote an intel-based pc that offers its own custom user interface, built on top of windows media center, and the ability to show television programs.

intel, itself, showed a reference platform for a small pc, dubbed golden gate. the machine, which is about the size of an external cd drive for a pc, is based on intel's forthcoming dual-core "yonah" notebook pc processor, a tv tuner and an optical drive.

viiv pcs, which are due out during the first quarter of next year, will be based on dual-core intel chips and will come with software such as media center and the media server data translator.

brand-name pc makers, including companies such as hewlett-packard co. and gateway inc., are expected to offer the machines.